PaulBriff 2025
Cycles
Chambéry charmer of seasons propels stylistic paradigm across the calendar to uncover concealed links between time and space.
Multi-instrumentalist Paul Briffoteau is no slouch when it comes to finding his solo legs after leaving Brussels progressive rock scene and reconnecting with the French landscapes the young composer used to find inspiration in his salad days. That’s where and when the artist known now as PaulBriff decided to realize the idea of celebrating the passage of a year in a way quite different from what Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky did, and the full crystallization of the idea took him a whole year, too. With the “Souffleur de Rêve” EP issued first, to ease the listener into this musician’s inner sanctum, the five pieces which form “Cycles” – one for each of the temporal periods, plus a finale – perfectly outline his world, yet those expecting typical shifts between elegy and drama are in for quite a few genre-defying surprises here.
So don’t be misguided by such titles as “Lethargy” – and not because there’s a lot going on during winter, but because here’s a prime example of Briffoteau’s mastery of musique concrète as organic part of his ecological message, with half-whispered verses embroidering the wind-whooshed passages of ivories that get anchored by bass notes. This brief number is all the more expressive when it lands on a violon solo to logically follow the gorgeous “Falling Leaves” whose piano ripples, shot through with field recordings, are simply breathtaking, if delicately insistent. However, the chamber buildup towards “Biophony” can’t prepare the audience for the moment when gentle folk strum and unobtrusively emerging beats give way first to a rather muscular hoedown, with rustic harmonica hurrying to meet trumpet and clarinet, and then to what may amount to mariachi jive.
This friendly fire – or fire lit with the help of Paul’s friends – is stoked even further once “Heatwaves” takes unhinged guitar riffs to the fore of its punk-blues and lets Briff’s growling rip across the sun-scorched, nigh-on orchestral backdrop. That’s why a much quieter “Coda” is required: to link the instrumental narrative back to the beginning yet do so on a significantly deeper level – as any cycle should in order to progress and prompt another spin of the record’s wondrous microcosm.
*****
